Rant about texting walkers

Most of us never notice the mildly complex 'dance' we do when sharing the pavement with people walking the other way. It starts about 30 yards away on a clear causeway, closer obviously if the line of sight is obscured by people or objects. We look at the person coming our way and make a judgement about what trajectory they're taking. If it looks like it may intersect with our own, we each make little course adjustments all the while checking out the other's adjustments and if necessary adjusting further. Normally this allows both parties to devise non-intersecting routes in fairly short order. Just occasionally the random re-selecting of trajectories results not in a non-intersect but in a repeated intersect and we do that dance of apologetic sidestepping until we may even have to verbally or gesturally unjam our little quasi-crash. Most of the time we don't even consciously notice we're doing all of that.

BUT ... when someone is not looking because their gaze is entangled in a screen as they walk, all of that reading the tiny adjustments to trajectory is thrown awry, even worse when they are given occasional attention to the walkway because then you don't know for sure what they may have seen or not seen, whether they are going to continue or check -and certainly you can't assume that they will notice that because, for instance, you have people either side of you, you have little room for manoeuvre. Head in a smart-phone? Grrr: non-cooperative pedestrian.

I used to do it until I realised that it made me a pain to anticipate and increased my chances of collision or near-collision. I now tend to stop and find a spot out of the way of the main flow of walkers to deal with my text message or map directions. Please, people, do likewise and stop getting in the way of the rest of us who are paying attention to what we're doing. ...

L'enfer, c'est vraiement les autres.  Nous vous remercions de la phrase, M. Sartre.